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The LIBOR scandal is being called the "Wall Street scandal of all scandals" and the "rotten heart of finance," but the massive fraud can be hard to fathom for anyone who doesn't follow the markets.

The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is a benchmark interest rate used broadly all over the world and affects trillions of dollars of loans -- mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans -- worldwide.

This nifty infographic from AccountingDegree.net gives non-finance folk an idea of the scope of the scandal.

166 Comments

Taibbi's comment at the end was not about Libor but about another American bank scam which has little attention.. you can read the piece here... http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

"This is the world’s biggest banks stealing money that would otherwise have gone toward textbooks and medicine and housing for ordinary Americans, and turning the cash into sports cars and bonuses for the already rich. It’s the equivalent of robbing a charity or a church fund to pay for lap dances."

And this , my friends, is why local and state taxes are skyrocketing over pension liabilities. Sadly , the answer from the 1% who benefited is to cut the pensions, not recover the losses. The day for picking up the torches and the pichforks is growing closer all the time.

ok so where are the handcuffs ? They know it was done, they know who did it and no arrests?? give me a break the law is written for them not us its JUST US for them and justice for us. KEEP VOTING that really works .

So in reality the banks were doing intrest favor's for each other while robbing anyone and everyone who deposited money in the bank. It sound like a sound Republican Plan something that Bain Capital investments should look into becuse unless they were aware and on the inside then they lost money to. But if Bain did not lose but by being on the insled line made money on top of all the jobs they sent to China and all the ameerican companies and the employees reiterment funds that they cashed out with out paying to the employees which now had to get a token of there retierment from the Federal Goverment which had insured the Retierment accounts. While Bain and Master thief Romney who will not release his tax statments or the amount of money he has in his wife's name in out of country banks.Just sits back and tells his friends elect me and your problems will be all over. becuse I will dump it all on the dwindeling middle class!

Nowadays, many banks and big corporations have learned how to cheat people affiliated with them financially as well as how to steal small investors' money supporting them, legally. Having said that, not all of them will ever do it but they all have the capability in doing it. The anomaly occurring in the financial and corporate systems, in most cases, originates in the higher management. Why? Because the CEO that manages the entire corporation has all the opportunities to do all kinds of evil works without being detected or caught within their own domain. In oher words, many CEOs have the tendency to lose their control in fighting against all temptations surrounding them.

Example: CEO can inflate the accounting to cover up what he has stolen or intended to steal from corporate bank account or tangible properties like parts and equipment. He can also use his own investment where his mouth is as a basket to steal all small investors' money by jacking up the share price, then sell all his shares with very high price before pulling out all his investment. And the next thing you know, the price of each of your own share suddenly and dramatically dropped to a value that I can only translate to losing all your dreams into darkness.

I think it's time to change the current corporate structure because the most common structure used by corporations nowadays is a kind of open-loop structure, not a close-loop structure like the governmental system comprising 3 main branches or bodies that can check each other. And in this way, the number of anomalies in banks and in corporations can be minimized, I think.

Is anyone surprised, this is why the world is in the mess its in today. When ever ou put people together with money you are going to get this type of hankey pankey. There is a reason why all those guys make high seven figure salaries, they steal it Let me let eveybody else in on a small secret the entire market is rigged, and the SEC doesn't have the will or the manpower to fix it.